The South is a big region in a big country.That's the main thing. We're "so deep into that landscape we did not realize/ we'd been talking in accents all our lives"
--Pierce Pettis, "Little River Canyon"

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Weather Dreams: January 30, 2013

As a young woman my grandmother was struck by lightning--knocked out cold and quit breathing--during a Southern storm. As a four-year-old, I had a recurring dream that the wind caused an airplane to crash into our house. In real life I kept my little pink suitcase packed at the foot of my bed, sure that when the time came, the sound of the wind would wake me and I would hear the whine of the falling plane, giving me time to grab the suitcase and escape to my and my brother's large sand pile under a cedar tree in the back yard.

If you are from the Deep South, bad weather is part of your blood memory.

My Southern colleague whose office is next door to mine has five weather apps on her smart phone. She needs them.

This is not to say that people become visibly shaken or quit going about their daily business at the threat of what weather types like to call 'tornadic activity'. People don't panic. They keep right on brushing their teeth and putting on their shoes and appearing at the office as if it is a normal day. Which it is not.

If you lived in the state of Alabama yesterday, there were periods of catatonic awareness, where concentration was limited and anything you attempted to do failed. It was like someone from Louisiana had put a hex on us. The Weather Channel's Tor Con prediction number for our area was moderately high at '5'. Weather scientists can debate the legitimacy of the Tor Con Index all they want and make fun of it as wannabe science. All I know is the Tor Con Index predicted the April 2011 tornado outbreak of 62 tornadoes that killed over 252 people in Alabama alone, according to the website al.com that lists all the names as well as the locations where they died. Those 62 tornadoes raked our entire state as if the claws of a giant paw had swooped down from the heavens. They left big long parallel gashes of damage that cut diagonally across Alabama into Georgia.

Yesterday it began up in the northwest corner of the state at 3 AM with the fading wail of the tornado sirens and the wind whipping the bare trees around in fits and starts. My husband--who grew up in another state--stayed in bed, but I wandered down to the TV to stream the latest radars. He didn't sleep any better than I did. And when he got up to drive to work, we noted on the TV screen where he might encounter wind and driving rain on the road. From there, the day just unraveled.

By late morning the threat across our region had passed, but we were all dazed and marginal. So far there were downed trees, blocked roads, lost power. If there was a black cat on the street, it was going to run right out in front of us, we knew. I watched a female student slip down in a puddle in her cheerful rubber rain boots. Students and professors alike had the semi-dazed look of the hungover.

By noon, as the hit parade of counties under the gun had passed further and further south, I got an email from my friend down in the lower part of the state.

"Tornado warning on now – sirens
blaring." she wrote."The sirens are quieting now, and then restarting. They are eerie. Impossible to concentrate or to work in this."

By the time my husband arrived home from work, the threat of bad weather had passed our state and moved its killing powers into Georgia. But the look on his face told the story of his day. Everything he and anyone else at work had tried to do was jinxed. Doomed. Out of sync.

And then we started hearing the stories of damage and death. Adairsville, Georgia. Coble, Tennessee. Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. We heard countless stories of damaged roofs and flying awnings but also of old houses we love that had escaped the giant claw once again. Then the stories of travel horror. Not one but TWO of our friends stranded in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. One got home in the wee hours of the morning by taking a detour flight and driving the rest of the way in a rental car. The next day he left his laptop in the returned rental car, and just about the time he realized it, he got stuck in an elevator. Checkmate. The other friend couldn't get out of Dallas. Her mom and grandmother back home in Alabama had been taken to the same hospital, freakishly, with nothing storm-related--at least not directly. By the next night, though, Friend # 2 had made it home and tweeted "1 flight, 1 hotel, 3 delays, 1 more hotel + 1 more delay = it's good to be home & cooking dinner for the fam tonight."

Some people say it is sheer human folly to worry about tornadoes. If it's your turn, brother, it's your turn.

But I say that to go about one's normal business on a day when the Tor Con is over the level of 5 is to face life head on, head down into the wind of turmoil, and at the end of the day--if the power is still on--you can retell the story. You can even laugh about it over dinner. But forget about it? Never. It's our shared history we carry in our blood.

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me

Website: www.amgarner.com

Video of Co. Rd 14 Tour

View the new video with me narrating a tour of County Rd. 14 at www.amgarner.com and click on HEAR ANITA.

Frank's Peas

Talking in Accents: Diversity in Southern Fiction

It is easy to make up characters who live in double-wide mobile homes, wear beehive hairdos and feed caps, never put a 'g' on the end of a participle...; who aspire only to own a bass boat, eat something fried, speak in tongues. What is difficult is to take the poor, the uneducated, the superstitious, the backward, the redneck...and make them real human beings, with hopes and dreams and aspirations. Tony Earley

Other places to visit (and don't forget to take the County Road 14 Photo Tour, right after POSTS)

UNDENIABLE TRUTHS

The Southland with Blue Sky

County Road 2 Tour

When you turn onto County Rd. 2 in early September, look for the Dove Hunt signs, which mean that on the following Saturday, a dove hunt will be organized in one of the fields.

Dove Hunt Here

Drive through five or so miles of rolling fields and suddenly you find you have arrived at the scene of the Dove Hunt. A truck is parked near the main road (Co. Rd. 2) and a man sits at a table, signing in participants and spelling out the rules. The hunt takes place in the large fields where corn has been harvested. (You can see the stubble around the Dove Hunt Here sign.) The doves love to scavenge the fields for spilled grain.

Cotton on Gunwaleford Road

The view from the front doors of the church.

Sunrise: Picking Peas off County Rd. 2

Drive five or six more miles through County Rd. 2's fields and you'll come to a crossroads.I got this shot just as the sun was peaking over the horizon in one of the big fields off Gunwaleford Rd. ( County Rd. 2 is also called Gunwaleford Road.) Frank Johnson's ancestors lived on this land while it was still a reservation. He plants a large field every year in corn and another in the best purple-hulled peas you've ever eaten. When the corn and, later, peas are ready to harvest, he starts calling all the neighbors. The best thing to do is to get up before dawn to pick peas. The fields are cool and the only sound is the breeze. It took my husband and me two hours to pick plenty of peas to eat now and freeze for later. The morning glories climb the stalks of the pea plants.

Morning glory

The peas in the fields are covered in morning glories that are open for sun rise.

Pea Sheller

Spending two hours picking peas is one thing. Spending eight hours shelling them is another. My suggestion: take them to the pea shelling machine. Other cool stuff at this store: sticky paper spider traps, local honey, good waterproof duck hunting boots. The proprietor is a friendly guy who will give you helpful hints about pea picking and how to store the peas spread out to dry overnight for the best results from the pea shelling machine.

Coldwater Seed and Supply

Home of the pea sheller. OK, technically you have to drive back into town for this, but if you've picked several bushels of peas, believe me, it's worth it.

The Lake Winks Silver

Further out Gunwaleford Road is Sunset Beach on the Tennessee River, within sight of the Natchez Trace bridge. This part of the Tennessee is Pickwick Lake, smallmouth bass heaven. The large hybrid striped bass also have seasonal runs. Catfish up to 100 lbs. have been caught in the locks at Pickwick Dam. Windsurfing days are best in spring and early fall when the seasonal changes bring wind warnings for area lakes.

Coon Dog Cemetery

Continuing the tour, bring a camera, a cooler, and some tick spray. It's a short ride to the Coon Dog Cemetery.

Head stone at the Coon Dog Cemetery

If you take Co. Rd. 2 all the way to the Natchez Trace Bridge and then follow the Trace across the Tennessee River, you will enter Colbert County where the Coon Dog Cemetery is found.

Head stone at the Coon Dog Cemetery

I can't imagine naming a dog High Pocket. When I'm naming a dog, I always try to envision what I would feel like calling the name loudly if the dog became lost. "Here, High Pocket." No, I don't think so. Too impersonal. But I love High Pocket's stone, love the way the dog is waiting on his/her master, or maybe just stretched out in the shade of the porch in an Alabama August. Someone really loved High Pocket.

November 1

They just couldn't leave

Some of the white pelicans stayed through the summer.

January

Thanksgiving Morning, 2014.

START YOUR TOUR with Coosa County Road 14

This just about sums it up. Literally and figuratively.

A Rocky Ford

Before there was a road, wagons forded the creek on these rocks. To the left just out of the frame is a large white sand bar. The bluff in the background climbs up a hundred feet or so and is covered in mountain laurel laced with wisps of Spanish moss. Where North Alabama meets South Alabama.

Geocaching. Sort of.

Locking in coordinates.

MORE COOSA. Geocaching, sort of.

Dovetailed logs on corner of cabin.

Interior logs

The cabin has log walls inside.

one of the deer paths

Ammonium nitrate makes the grass green and sweet

No one agrees when I say we should use the hose to spray off the mud

...standing beside muddy Jeep tires

Moss grows on the flat rocks

Waverly in Alabama

Waverly can play a reel fast and pure enough to make your heart spin.

Sears Chapel Church

Built right before the Civil War by my relatives who made furniture down the hill on Hatchett Creek, Sears Chapel held services only on the first Sunday of the Month. There was an outhouse, no air conditioning, plenty of wasps circling the light fixtures that hung from chains from the high ceilings. More often than not, we were late for services so we just drove on by and looked for somewhere to have Sunday lunch. Kowaliga was a favorite. Or barbecue at Cotton's. Growing up I kept my clothes in a pine wardrobe built by the same people who built the church. My daughter's dresses hang there today.

Coosa County Musicians

Think of this photo as you read "The Mayor of Nowhere" in UNDENIABLE TRUTHS.

Churchyard

This is where we're all buried. Except the ones who died before the church was built. They're buried out in the woods, and every twenty years or so, we visit the graves. To make sure they haven't just up and left.